The Year of Loving Dangerously - Hardcover

Ted Rall

  • 3.17 out of 5 stars
    115 ratings by Goodreads
 
9781561635658: The Year of Loving Dangerously
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 1561635650 ISBN 13: 9781561635658
Publisher: NBM/ComicsLit, 2009

Synopsis


Here’s a new turn for the controversial cartoonist and commentator Ted Rall. Not only is this autobiographical but he has paired up with the acclaimed artist of Bluesman and The Castaways for fully painted art. It’s the eighties and Ted is in college in New York City and slipping. His pranks, lack of focus and restlessness get him kicked out of school. Unable to find a job, rejected by his parents, he’s on the verge of suicide. Instead he finds comfort in the arms of many women he meets casually and puts up a front for. Hey, better than being homeless and begging, but then… is it? It may sound like an ideal grift but the toll is much higher than one may imagine. Between acidly funny and disturbingly real, Rall, a cartoonist whose work has alienated half the world, pours out his guts on a hard turning point in his life. Callejo adopts a new fully painted color style for this work, showing his versatility.

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About the Author


Twice winner of the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award and a Pulitzer Prize finalist, Ted Rall is a syndicated editorial cartoonist and columnist for Universal Press Syndicate. His previous books include To Afghanistan and Back, Revenge of the Latchkey Kids and 2024.

From the Back Cover

Here's a new turn for the controversial cartoonist and commentator Ted Rall. Not only is this autobiographical but he has paired up with the acclaimed artist of Bluesman and The Castaways for fully painted art. It's the eighties and Ted is in college in New York City and slipping. His pranks, lack of focus and restlessness get him kicked out of school. Unable to find a job, rejected by his parents, he's on the verge of suicide. Instead he finds comfort in the arms of many women he meets casually and puts up a front for. Hey, better than being homeless and begging, but then]] is it? It may sound like an ideal grift but the toll is much higher than one may imagine. Between acidly funny and disturbingly real, Rall, a cartoonist whose work has alienated half the world, pours out his guts on a hard turning point in his life. Callejo adopts a new fully painted color style for this work, showing his versatility.

From the Inside Flap

The long hot summer of 1984 in New York City. Duran Duran and the Scorpions on the radio. Mayor Ed Koch flipping off anti-Reagan protesters as he pulls into Gracie Mansion. Wannabe Madonnas strut the streets of Manhattan wearing Lycra mini skirts and bras on top of fuchsia blouses. Jersey girls from exurbia turn heads with one exposed shoulder, à la Flashdance. Down on Wall Street, "power dressing" rules--men with yellow ties and women in jackets with shoulder pads jostle and sweat in pre-air-conditioned, graffiti-covered subway cars on their way to jobs at companies like E.F. Hutton and Prudential Bache.

Uptown in Morningside Heights, which snottier downtown types call Harlem, summer session students at Columbia University loiter on the steps in front of Low Library, making college-age jokes about the phallic fountains and playing guitar.

Inside the relatively new(yet rat-infested) East Campus complex, however, Ted Rall has just received an eviction notice. He has twenty-four hours to leave his summer dorm room. He has nowhere to go.

In a mad panic, Ted boxes up his worldly possessions, dumps them in an unlocked janitor's closet, and prepares to leave behind his comfortable life as a college student. No more meal plan. No more classes. No more school dances. No place to live. No way to get money. Just like that, Rall is homeless.

With art by "Bluesman" artist Pablo G. Callejo, "The Year of Loving Dangerously" is a graphic memoir about coming of age under the worst possible circumstances. It's a story of sex, despair and embracing life--no matter what.

Reviews

In 1984, leftist cartoonist Rall was a third-year student at Columbia when a wart on his chest burst, leading to a weeklong hospital stay. Because he missed finals, he was put on academic probation and eventually thrown out of school. Unemployed and too proud to go home, he came up with a strategy. If a woman took him home for the night, he wouldn’t have to sleep on the street. Resisting intimacy whenever it showed itself, Rall found many women interested in him while unaware of his other motive. His quest for a woman ready to share her blanket took him to Washington, D.C., for anti-Reagan rallies and into several apartments in which he was more interested in well-stocked refrigerators than impending sexual adventures. Realistically illustrated in soft colors by Callejo, of Bluesman (2004–06) fame, and maximally unbuttoned in some places, Rall’s sympathetic account of his life on the edge encourages identifying with a situation so desperate that his outrageous choices seem necessary. --Stephen Weiner

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Publisher
NBM/ComicsLit
Publication date
2009
Language
English
ISBN 10 
1561635650
ISBN 13 
9781561635658
Binding
Hardcover
Illustrator
Pablo G. Callejo
Number of pages
128
Rating
  • 3.17 out of 5 stars
    115 ratings by Goodreads

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9781681122151: The Year of Loving Dangerously

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  1681122154 ISBN 13:  9781681122151
Publisher: NBM Publishing, 2019
Softcover